Thursday, August 18, 2016

From Brexit to Eurasian Integration?

Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
who rules the World-Island commands the world.

Halford John Mackinder
Britain's new Prime Minister, Teresa May, who campaigned against Brexit in the June referendum, is in no hurry it seems, to execute the will of the British people to quit the EU. Rather, her government has indicated that it will take its time, up to three years, to act upon the will of the people.

If a week in politics is a long time, three years is an eternity, during which the direction of any government may rotate one hundred and eighty degrees multiple times. Thus one explanation for Ms. May's slow mo approach to Brexit is that she has no intention of going through with the process, but as we posited the other day, seeks rather to defeat the will of the people by avoiding Brexit altogether.

But this explanation for the UK Government's tardiness in implementing Brexit is not as compelling as it may at first appear. The EU, after all, is moribund, with most of its constituent nations resentful of the way that Germany, the EU's industrial power house, has prospered while ruthlessly imposing austerity on the EU's weaker members. Moreover, the weakness at the periphery of the Eurozone is a direct result of the strength at the center. The Euro, being under-priced relative to the productivity of Germany's workforce, has strongly stimulated the German economy, whereas it has more or less severely retarded the economies of other EU nations, where workforce productivity is lower, or much lower, than Germany's.

The economic difficulties of much of the EU combined with the widespread disgust at Ms. Merkel's enthusiasm for flooding Europe with millions of young, aggressive Muslim males suggest that the EU is now in a condition similar to that of the no less democratic Soviet Union at the moment of its of implosion.

Why then would Ms. May, apparently an astute politician, decline the opportunity that the Brexit vote provides to abandon a sinking ship?

The answer, surely, is to be found in geopolitics. If Britain were to exit the EU tomorrow, which it undoubtedly could, its relations with the United States would require drastic revision. As a member of the EU, Britain has a special relationship with the US. It is a convenient location for many American corporations doing business in Europe, and serves, by virtue of the "special relationship," as an agent of influence for the United States within the EU. Outside the EU, however, Britain is of rather little consequence to the US except as an unsinkable aircraft carrier, within striking range of Russia, North Africa and the Middle-East. In other words, outside the EU, Britain's value to the US becomes chiefly that of a military base, a European off-shore island under military occupation.

What then should Ms. May do?

Under the circumstances, the time is clearly ripe for a total reconsideration of the administrative structure, and economic and military relations of both the UK and the EU. The prospect of the imminent implosion of the EU must surely have concentrated the minds of a formerly complacent EU elite. The anti-nationalist policies of the EU are loathed and despised by all but the most brainwashed of the European population, while the anti-Russian policies forced upon the EU by the United States are resented by the business class for the damage they do to multiple industries from agriculture and tourism to engineering and the military industrial complex.

The remedy for Europe thus seems clear: change sides in the New Cold War. That means calling a new world into existence — the Eurasian World — to redress the balance of the old. Russia is back as a world power. Only a lunatic or totally enslaved Europe will wage war against Russia for the benefit of American global domination. Rather, Europe has no rational foreign and economic policy other than Eurasian integration: a free-trade zone and security zone from Atlantic to Pacific based on Russian resources and defense and space technology; European capital, science and advanced technology; the vast human capital of Asia; these linked by the new Silk Roads, Rails and Pipelines.

Domestically, the European nations must restore their democracies, drive out alien ideologies from political correctness to Islamic fundamentalism, while restoring the vitality of their indigenous populations and cultures.

The result?

One hundred years of peace, perhaps, during during which we might figure out how to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction, live in balance with the environment, and devise a long-term future for humanity.

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